Regulatory Czar - Cass Sunstein

Regulatory Czar - Cass Sunstein

Title: Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Salary: unknown

Reports to: Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag

Appointed: January 2009

Nomination was sent to Senate on April 20, 2009 – no action yet taken

Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB

• Will be responsible for reviewing draft regulations and assessing their costs and benefits

• Is a Harvard Law School professor; prior to that, was a professor at the Univ. of Chicago Law School (1981-2008)

• Academic specialties: constitutional law, administrative law, and regulatory policy

• Obama: "Cass is not only a valued advisor, he is a dear friend"

• Known for advancing a field called "law and behavioral economics" that seeks to shape law and policy around the way research shows people actually behave; though embraced by conservatives, critics say it fails to account for the sometimes less-than-rational aspects of human behavior.

• In his 2002 book, Republic.com, discussed the drawbacks of limitless choices on the Internet that allow people to seek out only like-minded people and opinions that merely fortify their own views; he talked about the idea of the government requiring sites to link to opposing views. He later came to realize it was a "bad idea."

• In his 2004 book, Animal Rights, suggested that animals ought to be able to bring suit, with private citizens acting as their representatives, to ensure that animals are not treated in a way that violates current law.

• In a 2007 speech at Harvard he called for banning hunting in the U.S.

• The American Conservative Union started a website, Stop Sunstein, in an effort to keep him out of the White House.

(SOURCE: List of Obama Czars by Glenn Beck
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Devout disciple of Peter Singer.

Liberal activist Judge believes free speech needs to be limited for the "common good".

Rules against personal freedoms many times...like private gun ownership.

Says animals should be able to sue people.

Anti-hunting..

Obama czar pick: 'Raving animal rights nut'
Nominee advocated hunting ban, giving creatures right to file lawsuits

President Obama's friend and nominee for "regulatory czar" is a "raving animal rights nut" who has a secret agenda, according to one consumer group.

David Martosko, director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, told Fox News' Glenn Beck that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor nominated by the president to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a "raving animal rights nut" and devout disciple of Peter Singer.

Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, is a leader in the animal rights movement. He has also argued that abortion should be permissible because unborn babies as old as 18 weeks cannot feel pain or satisfaction.

Singer once explained his belief that, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

In 1993, Singer said infants lack "rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness."

"Infants lack these characteristics," he said. "Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings."

Martosko told Beck, "When you embrace this whole utilitarian idea, guess what else comes in the back door? Some animals, according to Singer, are worth more than some humans. A smart border collie, he says, is worth more, inherently, than a retarded child. … Cass Sunstein has embraced the whole enchilada. … He believes that animals should have some of the same rights as humans, in fact, greater rights than some people – including the right to follow lawsuits."

Sunstein has also supported outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption.

The center quotes Sunstein's 2007 speech at Harvard University, where he argued in favor of "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating" and proposed: "We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now."

He also said, "[Humans'] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings."

According to the group, Sunstein was editor of the 2004 book "Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions" that said "animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian-like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients' behalf."

Martosko believes if Sunstein becomes "regulatory czar," he could "spell the end of animal agriculture, retail sales of meat and dairy foods, hunting and fishing, biomedical research, pet ownership, zoos and aquariums, traveling circuses, and countless other things Americans take for granted."

"Cass Sunstein owes Americans an honest appraisal of his animal rights agenda as America's top regulator," Martosko said in a statement. "Americans don't realize that the next four years could be full of bizarre initiatives plucked from the wildest dreams of the animal-rights fringe."

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